The present invention relates to a method of, and apparatus for, receiving and transacting a customer's order for photofinishing.
Conventionally, exposed photographic films such as negative films are forwarded to agencies mediating the customer's orders for photofinishing, wherein each film is packed in a prescribed customer's order envelope after writing necessary information, such as the name of the customer and the content of the order, on a predetermined portion of the envelope. Then, the envelopes containing the photographic films are forwarded to a photofinishing laboratory (hereinafter simply referred to as a "photo-lab"). In the photolab, the envelopes are manually sorted according to the content of the order written thereon.
Because of such a manual transaction of print orders, a misreading of the written information and thus a mistake in sorting of the envelopes have sometimes occurred.
The developed films are conventionally cut into pieces so as to be inserted in film sheaths, and the film sheaths are returned to the customers. But, recently, film cassettes have been suggested wherein a cassette, from which an exposed film has been pulled out for development, is used to accommodate a developed film, e.g., the same film as previously contained, in the form of a roll. When making extra prints, such a film cassette containing a developed film is forwarded to a photo-lab, in the same way as for developing and printing.
However, because the appearance of film cassettes containing developed film is not distinguishable from cassettes containing exposed but undeveloped film, it is troublesome to sort out films intended for extra printing from those intended for developing and printing. If a film intended for extra printing is mistakenly subjected to developing and printing, because the content of the customer's order is usually not confirmed until all the processes are completed, unnecessary prints will be made. If, in this case, the customer requests that a plurality of extra prints be made from an image frame, it is necessary to perform printing once more so as to obtain the desired prints.
In this way, conventional film sorting or transacting methods in photo-labs are very labor intensive and inefficient.